About the project

The project will discuss and evaluate legal and factual drivers for the commodification of data in the data economy. As pointed out in the EU Commission Communication “Building a European Data Economy”, data has become an essential resource for economic growth, job creation and societal progress, whereas the data economy “is characterized by an ecosystem of different types of market players – such as manufacturers, researchers and infrastructure providers – collaborating to ensure that data is accessible and usable”. The factual drivers for the emergence of data becoming an essential resource and the markets in the data economy are related to the technological development over the last years, where connectivity has dramatically changed the way data can be accessed in that data that were usually accessed through physical connection now can be accessed remotely at an immense speed. The legal drivers can be identified by way of a comparison with other kinds of commodities, like typically physical goods. The project will demonstrate that data has particularities implying that the legal regulation and application surrounding the commodification of data is different from other kinds of commodities. In the project the legal drivers will be analyzed also with the view of whether there is a need for amendments of the legislative legal framework.